Area hotels bridge housing gap for oil field workers

Will Simpson, an employee with Tetra Tech, stands with his dog in the courtyard of the Clarion Hotel in Greeley after finishing his shift recently. Simpson is one of the many oil and gas workers that has taken advantage of the Clarion Hotel and other local businesses in the Weld County area.

Greg Zegebandr, left, and Nick Smith, right, work out in the Clarion Hotel in Greeley after working on the oil pipelines on Thursday. Businesses in Greeley have been benefitting from the large amount of oil workers that come here to work and live.

An oil and gas truck sits by the Clarion Hotel sign recently in Greeley. Oil and gas trucks are a common sight in hotel parking lots across Weld County as workers find places to stay in an increasingly tight housing market.

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Every morning, the men of the oil field file out of their rooms in waves, warming up their trucks and emptying parking lots that kept their vehicles all night long.

The most common sight at any hotel in Greeley these days is big, heavy duty trucks, side by side, warming up for their days and pouring out of hotel parking lots.

While the Wattenberg has boomed with the advent of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, companies have raced to be a part of it. And with them come their influx of workers, all who need a place to stay.

The rush caught Greeley a little flat-footed in terms of rental housing. There hadn’t been an apartment complex built in years prior to last year. Now, hundreds are slated to go up in the coming years to meet the ever-increasing demand. Area hotels have become the safety net.

“I think there’s probably enough to go around at this point,” said Renee von Weiland, operations manager for Spirit Hospitality in Fort Collins, which owns two hotels in Greeley and one in Loveland, all with an influx of oil and gas workers keeping the numbers strong.

While builders work on putting up apartments at a breakneck pace, area hotels are filling their rooms to the brim, two workers to a room, in many cases. The mix has been the great equalizer for the seasonal hotel industry, even with new brands on the market.

Some companies have had their rotating crews of employees room at area hotels for the last three years. Many of the workers are here from Wyoming or Oklahoma, or North Dakota, and still others have migrated here from the West Slope, where drilling has slowed with the downturn in gas drilling there.

It set off another mini-boom of hotels, with three more already planned around Greeley, and one in downtown Greeley. Spirit Hospitality, which owns the Hampton Inn and Suites in southcentral Greeley, opened its extended-stay hotel, Candlewood Suites, in west Greeley last fall, and boasts a good 50 percent to 60 percent of its business in the oil field.

The men of the oil field have become a huge set of big brothers for the workers at the Clarion Hotel and Conference Center in downtown Greeley.

“The guys are great, they’re really intelligent, they make you feel like you’re good at your job, they just treat you really well,” said Courtney Froman, assistant general manager of the Clarion. “They’re pretty much a regular guest, even though they live here, we take care of them just like any guest.”

On any given day, workers will be in the gym working out, in the restaurant catching up with friends and eating, or taking their dogs out for a walk. Most of the time, Froman said, they’re so tired from work, they don’t even leave their rooms.

The companies that hire the men ensure good behavior by making it a condition of employment.

“They all get along with each other; it’s really nice to have them here,” Froman said. “And we’re all girls so they’re pretty much protection for us.”

The hotel, which struggled for years under a patchwork of ownerships and operations levels, seems to have found a niche with the industry, which now comprises most of their business. The Clarion is the biggest hotel in Greeley with 164 rooms.

“It is very important to us,” Froman said of the oilfield business. “They’re basically what pays the bills here. They are regulars. It’s nice seeing the same faces all the time, just knowing them.”

The influx of workers has pretty much turned the hotel business model upside down, having for years dealt with the typical lean times in the winters and the influx of tourism in the summers.

“My winter business is as good as my summer business,” said Frank Brewster, co-owner of Days Inn in west Greeley. “Their business bell curve is the opposite of ours, which works out fantastic.”

Brewster estimates the oil and gas field traffic has contributed 20 percent to 30 percent of his annual business; and roughly 50 percent to 60 percent in the winter.

“My guess would be if we didn’t have oil and gas we’d be operating at my 2008 level, which I would take a 20 maybe 30 percent decrease in revenue. It wouldn’t kill us, but oil and gas is great.”

The industry has consistently kept Spirit Hospitality’s Greeley occupancy at 75 percent, which dwarfs annual averages on some national brands.

Spirit Hospitality opened Hampton Inn in 2006, and now is doing an extensive remodel. They opened the 83-room Candlewood Suites last September.

“At any given time, I would say about half of the hotel is out there” involved in oil and gas, von Weiland said.

“Looking at the vehicles in our parking lot and the clientele we have and the lengths of stay, we’ve got people who have been in there since we opened,” von Weiland said of the Candlewood, which opened the very day of a massive flood in Evans, and filled up with temporary housing for displaced residents.

“Greeley definitely has been very good to us,” von Weiland said. “We’re running a great occupancy and, frankly, this is usually the off-season. They’re usually not very viable.”

More will come soon. Hotel developer David Amin has planned an 85-room Homewood Suites hotel in south Greeley. Construction is expected to begin soon, with the hotel opening in spring 2015.

On the other side of Interstate 25, developer McWhinney has planned a 104-room Courtyard by Marriott hotel on the northeast corner of the I-25 and U.S. 34 interchange.

A 110-room Fairfield Inn is planned to go into Fort Lupton, as well, on Colo. 52 across form Safeway. The city, about 20 miles south of Greeley, hasn’t had a new hotel built in at least two decades, said Mayor Tommy Holton in a previous interview.

He said there is no doubt that the surge in oil and gas helped the developer pull the trigger on the hotel. Fort Lupton, which has only one large hotel now, has become the home to an expanded Halliburton facility, as well as some other oil and gas support companies that have brought new employees to the area.

“We’ve got some other (potential developers) kind of poking around,” Holton said. “There’s just no place to stay. There’s no housing.”

Construction will begin next year.

Though occupancies are high, there are some expectations of the oil and gas business trailing off. Brewster said companies will only go so far in giving employees housing allowances.

“What’s happening is a lot of companies are saying, ‘You need to move; we won’t put you up anymore.’ We’re seeing that influx go away. Those companies won’t support that forever. They’re making them move or commute. There’s always going to be influx of new people. At some point, it’ll be almost gone. At some point, it’ll be so minimal you wouldn’t even count it.”

“Looking at the vehicles in our parking lot and the clientele we have and the lengths of stay, we’ve got people who have been in there since we opened. — Renee von Weiland, operations manager for Spirit Hospitality, on the Candlewood Suites